Ron's Gone Wrong, Con't

Ahh, but we can't have an Israel-Palestine conflict without Florida coming in and reminding everyone that the fascist authoritarians running the place like GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis want to make sure that Palestinians have no voice in the Sunshine State.

 

Florida’s university system chancellor, responding to a push by Gov. Ron DeSantis, directed state universities Tuesday to disband campus groups with ties to the national Students for Justice in Palestine organization, marking the first punishments handed down to colleges here amid the Israel-Hamas war.

In a memo to school leaders, the state ordered a “crack down” on campus events led by the pro-Palestinian organization that the DeSantis administration claims amount to “harmful support for terrorist groups” like Hamas, which attacked Israel in early October. Florida, under Republican presidential candidate DeSantis, has staunchly supported Israel during the ongoing war and was monitoring college protests that have since ignited.

“Based on the National SJP’s support of terrorism, in consultation with Governor DeSantis, the student chapters must be deactivated,” state university system Chancellor Ray Rodrigues wrote Tuesday.

There are at least two Students for Justice in Palestine chapters at Florida universities facing cancellation through ties to the national organization, according to Rodrigues, who did not specify where the groups were located in the memo. The University of Florida and University of South Florida, though, both appear to have active SJP chapters.

 

Free speech is not something Florida Republicans believe in, you see. If you thought they only wanted to get rid of SJP, well, they want Black Lives Matter gone too, starting with both Florida GOP senators, Rick Scott and Marco Rubio.

Some Republican lawmakers are calling on Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser to rename the two-block area in front of the White House that was dubbed “Black Lives Matter Plaza” three years ago amid a wave of racial justice protests.

Groups affiliated with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement have faces a backlash after messages sent out following the grisly Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel appeared to support terrorists and express anti-Israel sentiment.

“BLM chapters across the nation have circulated disturbing anti-Semitic rhetoric and images on social media, encouraging the spread of pro-Hamas propaganda,” the group of more than 20 House and Senate members, all Republicans, wrote in a statement accompanying their letter.

“Continuing to honor terrorist sympathizers with a plaza in our nation’s capital is a slap in the face to all Americans, especially Jewish and Israeli Americans.”

Among Republicans signing the letter: Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.), Thom Tillis (N.C.), Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Rick Scott (Fla.), Josh Hawley (Mo.), Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.) and Bill Cassidy (La.); and Reps. Elisa Stefanik (N.Y.), Jim Banks (Ind.) and Jeff Duncan (S.C.).

The mayor’s office didn’t immediately respond to The Hill’s request for comment on the letter or plans for the plaza.

Immediately after Hamas’s deadly blitz on Israel, which included attacks on multiple kibbutzim and an outdoor music festival, some BLM chapters expressed sympathy with Palestine and appeared to justify the aggression against Israel.

A BLM Chicago chapter posted on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, an image of a paraglider with the message “I stand with Palestine.” BLM Phoenix shared statements declaring that “Palestinian freedom fighters are not terrorists!,” and “The Palestinian attack was a revolution and attempt to reclaim their freedom.”

BLM chapters are run independently and can be unaffiliated with the broader Black Lives Matter organization, which hasn’t commented on the latest Israeli-Hamas conflict.

 

Sure seems like cancel culture to me. Free Speech only for approved groups is not how it works, gang.

 

And Black Lives Still Matter.

Alabama's Bloody Tide

Alabama Republicans have been refusing federal Medicaid expansion money for years now, and like most non-expansion red states, more and more hospitals are reducing services or closing up entirely as a direct result. Three hospitals near Bimingham are shutting down their maternity wards over the next several weeks, leaving tens of thousands of women without a place to go to deliver babies by Thanksgiving.

 

By the end of the month, two Alabama hospitals will stop delivering babies. A third will follow suit a few weeks later.

That will leave two counties — Shelby and Monroe — without any birthing hospitals, and strip a predominantly Black neighborhood in Birmingham of a sought-after maternity unit.

After that, pregnant women in Shelby County will have to travel at least 17 miles farther to reach a hospital with an OB-GYN. And because the county, one of Alabama’s largest, is bordered by another whose hospital also lacks an obstetrics unit, some of those residents are also losing the closest place they could go to deliver their babies.

“There’s a sense of dread knowing that there’s going to be families who are now not only driving to the county over, but driving through three counties,” said Honour McDaniel, director of maternal and infant health initiatives for the March of Dimes in Alabama.

People in Monroe County, meanwhile, could face drives between 35 to 100 miles to a labor and delivery department.

Trekking that far to give birth is not unheard of in Alabama, in which more than a third of the counties are maternity care deserts, according to the March of Dimes — meaning they have no hospital with obstetrics care, birth centers, OB-GYNs or certified nurse midwives.

The state has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the country; only three others had higher rates between 2018 and 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Alabama also had the nation’s third-highest infant mortality rate in 2021, the latest data available.

Physicians currently or formerly affiliated with the Alabama maternity units about to close fear the consequences for pregnant women and babies, especially if people are not able to reach birthing hospitals quickly enough in emergencies.

“People are going to show up delivering in the ER, and you’re going to have bad outcomes,” said Dr. Jesanna Cooper, an OB-GYN who formerly worked at Princeton Baptist Medical Center, the Birmingham hospital closing its maternity services. “If you show up with a very premature baby and deliver in the ER, and you don’t have a NICU and you don’t have an obstetrics team, things aren’t going to go well.”

 

And of course the real kicker:

The closures come as the need for obstetrics care in Alabama is anticipated to rise as a result of its abortion laws. The state has banned almost all abortions since June 2022.

 

At this point, one would have to believe that the state Republican party, having banned abortion, and the same party letting hospitals die on the vine like this, really don't want those people to have sex at all without potentially ruinous consequences.  

When we talk about Alabama having a similar socioeconomic profile to say, Albania, understand that a poor exploitable populace is what the ruling government wants, and has wanted, for generations.

New Zealand Goes Right, Away

And on the same weekend where Australian voters resoundingly rejected codified rights for Indigenous people, neighboring New Zealand has seen voters sending the ruling Labour Party to the bench and have elected a right-wing conservative nationalist coalition that is promising to cut taxes, inflation, and oh yes, immigration.

 

New Zealand’s next prime minister will be Christopher Luxon, a former chief executive of Air New Zealand, whose center-right National Party will lead a coalition with Act, a smaller libertarian party.

Addressing a euphoric crowd at his party’s victory event on Auckland’s waterfront, Mr. Luxon thanked supporters and promised a better and more stable future for the country.

“Our government will deliver for every New Zealander,” he said, to whoops and cheers. “We will rebuild the economy and deliver tax relief.”

The rightward drift ended six years of the Labour government that was dominated by Ms. Ardern, who stepped down early this year.

“She’s probably the most consequential prime minister we’ve had since David Lange,” the Labour leader who came to power in 1984, “and, from an international point of view, most charismatic,” said Bernard Hickey, an economic and political commentator in Auckland, New Zealand. “But this election is the landmark of her failure.”

For many voters, Ms. Ardern and her successor, Chris Hipkins, failed to deliver on the Labour Party’s promise of transformational change. In the weeks leading up to the election, New Zealanders, buffeted by the currents of global inflation and its larger Asia Pacific neighbors’ economic woes, overwhelmingly cited cost of living as the primary concern driving their vote.

The coalition is a return to form for New Zealand, which since moving to a system of proportional representation in 1993 has had only one single-party government — the Labour government elected in 2020 under Ms. Ardern. But it is the first time National, which last governed alone in the early 1980s, has been in coalition with a more conservative partner.

With most of the vote counted, support for the Labour Party, which won 50 percent of the vote in 2020, buoyed by the country’s strong response to the coronavirus pandemic, has collapsed to 27 percent.

The National Party won 39 percent of the vote, up from 26 percent in 2020. Among the smaller parties, the Green Party took 11 percent of the vote, and Act won 9 percent. But those results could shift slightly after “special” votes were counted, including those of overseas New Zealanders. That could potentially force Act and National into coalition with New Zealand First, a longtime kingmaker that played a role in Ms. Ardern’s ascent, to push the right-wing coalition over the halfway mark.

Addressing party members in Wellington, Mr. Hipkins said he had conceded the election to Mr. Luxon and celebrated Labour’s accomplishments on alleviating child poverty and navigating New Zealand through the coronavirus pandemic, the Christchurch massacres and the White Island volcano eruption.

“We will keep fighting for working people, because that is our history and our future,” he said.

 

And yes, the rights for New Zealand's Maori population are now expected to be put to a vote.

The new National-led government, despite being more conservative, was unlikely to make significant changes on many social issues, said Ben Thomas, a former press secretary for the National Party.

“Nobody wants to re-litigate abortion or homosexual marriage,” he said. “Unlike the States, where there’s a constant battle to try and roll back progressive legislation, the conservative tradition in New Zealand is ‘We’ve always gone just about far enough.’”

But Act may seek to push policy priorities of its own, including a referendum to reconsider the role New Zealand’s Indigenous Maori people play in policymaking.

“What they actually want is a referendum which defines away any kind of standing or rights guaranteed to Maori by the Treaty,” Mr. Thomas said, referring to an 1840 agreement that governs New Zealand legislation to this day.

He added: “What you might broadly call racial tensions — over race and policy, Maori policy, Treaty policy — are greater than at any point since 2005.”

 

Putting rights of a minority group to a vote never seems to end well in any country. I don't expect New Zealand to be any different.

Down Under Disappointment

Australian voters have overwhelmingly rejected a referendum to give Indigenous people rights as a recognized group, because that would be racist against anyone who isn't a member of that class, you see.

Australia has overwhelmingly rejected a plan to give greater rights to Indigenous people in a referendum.

All six states voted no to a proposal to change the constitution to recognise Indigenous citizens and create an advisory body to the government.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said defeat was hard: "When you aim high, sometimes you fall short. We understand and respect that we have."

Opposition leader Peter Dutton said the result was "good for our country".

The referendum, dubbed "The Voice", was Australia's first in more than a quarter of a century. With almost 70% of the vote counted, the "No" vote led "Yes" 60% to 40%.

Its rejection followed a fraught and often ill-tempered campaign.

Supporters said that entrenching the Indigenous peoples into the constitution would unite Australia and usher in a new era.

No leaders said that the idea was divisive, would create special "classes" of citizens where some were more equal than others, and the new advisory body would slow government decision-making.

They were criticised over their appeal to undecided voters with a "Don't know? Vote no" message, and accused of running a campaign based on misinformation about the effects of the plan.

The result leaves Mr Albanese searching for a way forward with his vision for the country, and a resurgent opposition keen to capitalise on its victory.

 

So, Indigenous Australians will continue to not actually be Australians under the country's legal system, with fewer rights than other Australians, and that's what the 95% of Australians who are non-Indigenous voted for.

You don't have to work as hard as Republicans here in America have for the last 60 years to reverse the civil rights era if like Australia, you never actually have one. After all, we still have most Native American on reservations, and that's not going to change in my lifetime either.

There's no debating the racism in America or Australia (or the UK, Canad or New Zealand), the debate is over whether or not it's a bad thing, and for most folks in these coutries, the answer is no.

For those who actually are harmed by it, well, too bad, the majority has spoken.

Democracy!

Meet The New Ringmaster Of The GOP Clown Show

As expected, a majority of the House Republican caucus decided on Rep. Steve Scalise as their candidate for House Speaker rather than Rep. Jim Jordan, a direct repudiation of Trump's endorsement (everything he touches still turns to shit though). But the concept of Scalise getting 218 votes however still looks very elusive.

 

House Republicans on Wednesday nominated Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) to be the next Speaker, sending his candidacy to the House floor following Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) stunning ouster last week, multiple lawmakers told The Hill.

Scalise secured the nomination 113-99 in a closed-door GOP conference meeting, defeating House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) in a close race that did not have a clear front-runner heading into the internal vote.

Scalise will now take his candidacy to the House floor, where he will be up against House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), who Democrats nominated for Speaker on Tuesday night.

The floor fight could get messy. Candidates need the support of a majority of the chamber to take control of the gavel and Republicans hold a razor-thin majority. McCarthy required 15 rounds of voting to secure the gavel.

Multiple Republicans have already said they won’t vote for Scalise on the floor and others remained non-committal.

Jordan, however, said he offered to deliver a nominating speech on Scalise’s behalf.

Scalise’s nomination marks the pinnacle of his congressional career, which began in 2008 and has spanned more than nine years in leadership, including stints as Republican whip and, most recently, majority leader.

Throughout the week-long race for the top spot, Scalise branded himself as the Republican who could unite the conference following McCarthy’s ouster, which bitterly divided the GOP and inflamed tensions within the party.

“I’ve got a long history of bringing people together, uniting Republicans, focusing on the issues that we’ve got to do to address the issues we came here to do to get our country back on track,” Scalise told Fox Business in an interview Tuesday.

 

Yeah, let's have a little chat about Steve, shall we?  Remember how he spoke at a white supremacist hoedown with fellow Louisiana trash beast David Duke in 2014? ZVTS remembers, as does CNN.

The story has all the traits of a career-ending political scandal:

A congressman who recently snagged a top position in party leadership faces accusations that he addressed a hate group run by a notorious white supremacist. And all of that, just a week before his party is set to take the reigns of power in Congress.

But the fast rising career of Republican Rep. Steve Scalise, who was tapped as House Majority Whip this summer, may not be in the ditches just yet. There’s a lot to keep track of. Here’s what you need to know:

So what happened?

It turns out Scalise addressed an anti-Semitic, white supremacist group back in 2002 run by none other than David Duke, a former grand wizard of the Klu Klux Klan who is well-known in Scalise’s home state of Louisiana because of several statewide campaigns for governor and senator.

A liberal Louisiana politics blogger revealed the encounter with the European-American Unity and Rights Organization (EURO) after finding an account of Scalise’s speech to the group on a white supremacist forum.

The group is bad news for Scalise: it’s been labeled as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which details the group’s anti-semitic, racist views.

The next day, reporters in D.C. were asking Scalise’s office about the meeting and after aides first said it was “probable” and then “likely” the congressman spoke to the group, Scalise broke his silence in an interview with his local paper, The Times-Picayune of New Orleans.

He said he didn’t remember specifically addressing EURO, but said that at the time he “went and spoke to any group that called” in 2002 when he was trying to drum up support in opposing a state tax plan.

And then Scalise released the ultimate mea culpa statement Tuesday afternoon, calling his appearance at the event “a mistake I regret.”

“One of the many groups that I spoke to regarding this critical legislation was a group whose views I wholeheartedly condemn. It was a mistake I regret,” Scalise said.

 

That should have been the end of his career 9 years ago and now he's failed upward all the way to House Speaker, despite paling around with avowed racists and antisemites as Israel takes the American foreign policy stage. I bet there's going to be some fun phone calls this week between here and Tel Aviv. 

In hindsight, a Republican in Congress who was chasing the neo-Nazi vote in 2014 was simply ahead of the curve for the rest of the party, and now he's going to get rewarded for it.

Well, eventually. Who knows how many votes it will take to get him elected?

Big Bob's Bribery Blowout, Con't

New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez continues to face a concerted effort to oust him in the wake of last week's federal bribery indictments, and Democrats in the Garden State are ready to take out the trash.

 

Rep. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) announced Saturday that he will primary Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) after the senator was indicted on corruption charges Friday.

“After calls to resign, Senator Menendez said ‘I am not going anywhere.’ As a result, I feel compelled to run against him,” Kim said on X, formerly Twitter. “Not something I expected to do, but NJ deserves better.”

Kim was the second member of Congress and first from New Jersey to call on Menendez to resign Friday. A growing list of Democrats, headlined by Gov. Phil Murphy (D-N.J.), have asked Menendez to step down.

“I believe more than ever that New Jersey needs hard working, trustworthy leaders focused on the common good and injecting some integrity and civility back into our politics,” Kim wrote in his announcement, sharing a link to his donations page. “We cannot jeopardize the Senate or compromise our integrity any longer.

“Help me build a movement to restore faith in our democracy,” he added.

Prosecutors allege that Menendez and his wife accepted over $600,000 in bribes from a group of New Jersey businessmen to help them and interests in Egypt.

“These allegations are serious and alarming. It doesn’t matter what your job title is or your politics — no one in America is above the law,” Kim said in a statement to The Hill on Friday. “The people of New Jersey absolutely need to know the truth of what happened, and I hope the judicial system works thoroughly and quickly to bring this truth to light.”

 

I don't even think we'll get that far, I think Menendez will be told in no uncertain terms that he's out if NJ Dem Gov. Phil Murphy has anything to say about it.  Hell, even Sen. John Fetterman says Menendez needs to step aside and "focus on the trial".

But for now Menendez is holding firm, implying that Democratic critics are racist against Latinos.

"It is not lost on me how quickly some are rushing to judge a Latino and push him out of his seat," he wrote in a statement in response to Democratic officials who have publicly broken with him. "I am not going anywhere."

Menendez was appointed to the Senate in January 2006 by then-Gov. Jon Corzine, who previously held the seat and had just taken office in Trenton. The senator was elected to a full term later that year and reelected in 2012 and 2018.

And Menendez is up for reelection next year, creating a politically-perilous situation where he could stand trial while also campaigning for a fourth full term in office — a scenario many Democrats would prefer not to see unfold.

 

It's not brown, it's green cash and gold bars, my man.

 

Time to go.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

Trump can't stop lying to everyone: the press, his MAGA flunkies, and to himself.

 

Former President Trump is pushing his mug shot, arrests and criminal charges to try to claim new solidarity with Black voters — a group that has largely shunned him in elections.

Why it matters: Trump has latched on to a narrative promoted last month by Fox News commentators and others in conservative media — that his arrests could boost his standing among African Americans who believe the criminal justice system is unfair.

The big picture: There's little evidence he's getting an indictment bump among Black voters, despite his claim that support rose after the mug shot from his arrest in Atlanta was released. But his team believes he can make inroads with Black voters by pushing an I-am-a-victim-just-like-you storyline.

Zoom in: Trump claimed in a recent interview with conservative host Hugh Hewitt that his poll numbers among Black voters "have gone up four and five times" since his mug shot was released.That's not true, as CNN reported.

And it's unclear whether Trump's favorability with Black voters has increased beyond the 8% or so share he received in 2020. (Recent polls have suggested Trump's support among Blacks is improving, but pre-election polls in 2020 overstated his support.)

Driving the news: In recent weeks Trump has promoted videos of Black people defending him, and senior Trump advisers have kept in touch with Black celebrities who have supported him publicly.Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung posted on X a TikTok video of a 34-year-old Black man saying, "We rocking with Trump, man. Even the youth, they know what time it is."

"I just think — especially, again with the (Black) men — they're going to see through" the charges against Trump, "because they've been dealing with this for a long time," Donald Trump Jr. told Newsmax.

Black artists including Lil Pump, Kodak Black and Chief Keef have posted mugshots of themselves next to Trump's, shared supportive messages, or otherwise indicated they're rooting for him. Keef mused that Trump would "run the prison" if he's convicted. Another artist, Bandman Kevo, got Trump's image tattooed on his leg.

Several artists have pointed to actions Trump took while in office, including passing the First Step Act and PPP loans, as reasons for their support.

Yes, but: Critics of the former president see irony in his push for African Americans' support.Trump is charged in Fulton County, Georgia, with trying to overturn the 2020 election results. The charges stem from an alleged conspiracy in which Trump's team sought to invalidate votes in heavily Black urban areas across the country after the election.
Democratic pollsters doubt that Trump's support among a few Black artists will help him significantly. A bigger issue in a general election matchup against President Biden could be Biden's slipping numbers with non-white voters who don't have college degrees.

"The best way to describe (Trump's) political efforts here is pissing in windmills," former South Carolina state Rep. Bakari Sellers told Axios.

"I love Kodak. I love his music, but that doesn't mean that his thoughts on Donald Trump are going to be pervasive."

 

They accept us as long as we're willing to grovel to them. They'll take our street cred and our voices if it means they can use them to control the rest of us.

 

I don't think I will do that, thanks.

 

Last Call For A Stone Rolled Out

Rolling Stone magazine co-founder Jann Wenner managed to roll his nearly six-decade music journalism legacy off a cliff over the the space of 24 hours because he decided that white men were the only people who mattered in the history of rock 'n' roll.

Jann Wenner, the co-founder of Rolling Stone magazine, has been removed from the board of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, which he also helped found, one day after an interview with him was published in The New York Times in which he made comments that were widely criticized as sexist and racist.

The foundation — which inducts artists into the hall of fame and was the organization behind the creation of its affiliated museum in Cleveland — made the announcement in a brief statement released Saturday.

“Jann Wenner has been removed from the board of directors of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation,” the statement said. Joel Peresman, the president and chief executive of the foundation, declined to comment further when reached by phone.

But the dismissal of Mr. Wenner comes after an interview with The Times, published Friday and timed to the publication of his new book, called “The Masters,” which collects his decades of interviews with rock legends like Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen and Bono — all of them white and male.

In the interview, David Marchese of The Times asked Mr. Wenner, 77, why the book included no women or people of color.

Regarding women, Mr. Wenner said, “Just none of them were as articulate enough on this intellectual level,” and remarked that Joni Mitchell “was not a philosopher of rock ’n’ roll.”

His answer about artists of color was less direct. “Of Black artists — you know, Stevie Wonder, genius, right?” he said. “I suppose when you use a word as broad as ‘masters,’ the fault is using that word. Maybe Marvin Gaye, or Curtis Mayfield? I mean, they just didn’t articulate at that level.”

Mr. Wenner’s comments drew an immediate reaction, with his quotes mocked on social media and past criticisms unearthed of Rolling Stone’s coverage of female artists under Mr. Wenner. Joe Hagan, who in 2017 wrote a harshly critical biography of Mr. Wenner, “Sticky Fingers,” cited a comment by the feminist critic Ellen Willis, who in 1970 called the magazine “viciously anti-woman.”

In a statement issued late Saturday by a representative for Little, Brown and Company, the publisher of his book, Mr. Wenner said: “In my interview with The New York Times I made comments that diminished the contributions, genius and impact of Black and women artists and I apologize wholeheartedly for those remarks.

“‘The Masters’ is a collection of interviews I’ve done over the years,” he continued, “that seemed to me to best represent an idea of rock ’n’ roll’s impact on my world; they were not meant to represent the whole of music and its diverse and important originators but to reflect the high points of my career and interviews I felt illustrated the breadth and experience in that career. They don’t reflect my appreciation and admiration for myriad totemic, world-changing artists whose music and ideas I revere and will celebrate and promote as long as I live. I totally understand the inflammatory nature of badly chosen words and deeply apologize and accept the consequences.”

Robert Johnson, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Little Richard, Ray Charles, B.B. King, James Brown, but OK there Jann.

Hey, if the consequences are that his book crashes and burns, he's off the Rock 'n' Roll Hall board for good and he gets to live alone with his ghosts, I'm fine with that. Sadly, he's probably going to be booked by Tucker Carlson or Ben Shapiro and he'll be fine little martyr for the "we're just asking questions" set.

Still, it may be the most Jann Wenner thing ever to distill six decades of music down to Bono, Spingsteen and John Lennon. Never did like the guy.

Sunday Long Read: Ore-Gone Next Door

Conservatives in Oregon, a state founded as a white supremacist sanctuary, are finding that in 2023, the 86% white state isn't white supremacist enough, so they want the eastern part of the state to leave and become part of significantly more racist Idaho. WaPo's Scott Wilson takes a look at the white hot new imports into the Gem State in our Sunday Long Read this week.

 

The Snake River has formed the border of Oregon and Idaho for more than a century and a half, slicing through fields of onions, sugar beets and wheat that roll out for miles through Treasure Valley.

Here on the Oregon side, where Bob Wheatley has lived his entire life, are a collection of high-end cannabis shops, a new Planned Parenthood clinic, and gas prices a dollar higher than those just over the river.

Across the river in the town of Fruitland, in western Idaho, new housing subdivisions stretch out for miles from the main streets. Agriculture, bottling and construction businesses that just months ago were based in Oregon are thriving. One of Fruitland’s new problems is building enough schools to accommodate the out-of-state arrivals, many of them from Oregon.

“Things have changed,” said Wheatley, who retired recently after five decades as a local pharmacist. “And it’s the politics that have changed fastest.”

So far 12 counties in central and eastern Oregon have voted in favor of local ballot measures that compel county leaders to study the idea of moving the border about 270 miles west. The movement envisions 14 full counties joining Idaho, along with parts of others.

A 13th county is scheduled to take up the question on the May 2024 ballot. The region accounts for less than 10 percent of Oregon’s population, but most of its territory.

The push to change the border is rooted in policy differences and a sense that, in Oregon, there will be no way for conservatives to influence the laws and regulations made by the elected representatives of the far more numerous Democratic voters who live on the western side of the Cascades.

Idaho offers a much more comfortable political home for eastern Oregon’s conservatives, who live in many of the most racially homogenous counties in the state. In nearly every county that has voted to explore joining Idaho, White residents account for more than 80 percent of the population.

The political contrast between the states is stark.

Oregon Democrats have a more than 30 percent edge in voter registration over Republicans, and Joe Biden won the state by 16 percentage points in 2020. Idaho offers a mirror image: Republican voters outnumber Democrats more than 5 to 1, and Donald Trump defeated Biden by 30 percentage points. Both states have sent two senators from the same party to Washington — Democrats in Oregon, Republicans in Idaho.

At 74, Wheatley has been considering a move across the river for years, returning his wife, Chrystine, a retired nurse, to the state where she grew up. But he could not sell his home for enough money to buy something comparable in Fruitland, where prices are rising because of the Oregon arrivals.

So, in late 2020, Wheatley, never before a political activist, volunteered to gather signatures to place a measure on the May 2021 ballot compelling Malheur County commissioners to study joining Idaho. It passed easily.

“I told Chrys, ‘I can’t move you, but maybe I can move the border,’” Wheatley said. “So that’s what we’re trying.”

These twin towns across an old border straddle a seam in the nation’s deepening political polarization, neighboring opposites living under starkly different laws. The river separates states that, perhaps more than in any other part of the nation, embrace the two parties’ most extreme positions on gun control, abortion rights, environmental regulation, drug legalization and other issues at the center of the American political debate.

The result in eastern Oregon, from the volcanic Cascade Range to this border town, is a sense of profound political alienation. The disaffection among conservatives has spawned a movement to change the state’s political dynamic in a novel if quixotic way — rather than relocate or change the politics, which seems impossible to many here, why not move the border and become residents who live under the rules of Idaho?

This is no small task.

Both the Oregon and Idaho state legislatures, which are controlled by Democrats and Republicans respectively, would have to approve a border shift, which in this case would be the most significant geographically since western states began forming in the mid-19th century. The issue would then go to the U.S. Congress.

But, as more than two dozen interviews across the state made clear, there is momentum behind the cause among a lightly populated region of ranch land, swift rivers, and vast pine forests. It is known formally as the Greater Idaho movement.

 

I've talked about Idaho's growing white supremacist problem before, from Boise's openly racist white supremacist police department to the state's efforts to criminalize getting abortions in neighboring Oregon to the effort to include Northern California and Western Montana into Greater Idaho along with Eastern Oregon to the state's favorite heavily armed white supremacist domestic terrorist family, the Bundys.

The whole area along the Snake River and Willamette Valley is a powder keg. I hope the feds understand this.

Last Call For Reparation Nation, Con't

A new LA Times poll finds that Californians are massively opposed to cash reparations for Black citizens in the state as Oakland and other municipalities are suggesting be looked into.

 

California voters oppose the idea of the state offering cash payments to the descendants of enslaved African Americans by a 2-to-1 margin, according to the results of a new poll that foreshadows the political difficulty ahead next year when state lawmakers begin to consider reparations for slavery.

The UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll, co-sponsored by The Times, found that 59% of voters oppose cash payments compared with 28% who support the idea. The lack of support for cash reparations was resounding, with more than 4 in 10 voters “strongly” opposed.

“It has a steep uphill climb, at least from the public’s point of view,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the IGS poll.

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers created California’s Reparations Task Force in 2020 with the goal of establishing a path to reparations that could serve as a model for the nation. After two years of deliberations, the task force sent a final report and recommendations this summer to the state Capitol, where Newsom and the Democratic-led Legislature will ultimately decide how the state should atone for slavery.

The group suggested providing cash payments to all descendants based on health disparities, mass incarceration and over-policing and housing discrimination that have adversely affected Black residents compared with white Californians.

The remedies recommended in the report also go far beyond cash payments and include policies to end the death penalty, pay fair market value for jail and prison labor, restore voting rights to all formerly and currently incarcerated people and apply rent caps to historically redlined ZIP Codes that disadvantaged Black residents, among dozens of other suggestions.

 

This will never happen, of course. The closer California actually got to reparations, to resolving the core causes of the egregious economic imbalance between Black and white folks in even a state as liberal as the Golden State, the easier it becomes for Republicans and other opposition groups to kill any reparation measures at all. 

There's no faster way to get white, Asian, and Hispanic voters back on the GOP train, enough so to turn Cali back into the Pete Wilson/Arnold Schwarzenegger red state that it was 15, 20 years ago than meaningful reparations. Republicans would be crazy not to drive that wedge into everything from school boards to the Governor's mansion.

Reparations are still the moral thing to do, but there will be consequences to the point where I can see California Republicans taking every dime back and charging Black folk for interest.

Just to be assholes.

Ron's Gone Wrong, Con't

As I warned months ago, the entire point of Florida GOP Gov. ROn Desantis picking a fight directly with the College Board and AP Black History classes was to serve as cause for evicting all of the College Board's products from Florida schools and universities, including the SAT college entrance exam, and to replace it with the right-wing Christian Dominionist version.

 

The Classic Learning Test is the college admissions exam that most students have never heard of. An alternative to the SAT and ACT for only a small number of mostly religious colleges, the test is known for its emphasis on the Western canon, with a big dose of Christian thought.

But on Friday, Florida’s public university system, which includes the University of Florida and Florida State University, is expected to become the first state system to approve the Classic Learning Test, or CLT, for use in admissions.

“We are always seeking ways to improve,” said Ray Rodrigues, the chancellor of the State University System of Florida, noting that the system, which serves a quarter million undergraduates, was the largest in the country to still require an entrance exam.

It’s the latest move by Gov. Ron DeSantis to shake up the education establishment, especially the College Board, the nonprofit behemoth that runs the SAT program.

Governor DeSantis, a Republican presidential candidate, has already rejected the College Board’s Advanced Placement course on African American studies, and sparred over content on gender and sexuality in A.P. Psychology.

Now, at a time when the College Board faces a dwindling number of students taking the SAT, Governor DeSantis is giving a big lift to an upstart competitor.

Jeremy Tate, the founder of Classic Learning Initiatives, the company that developed the test, insisted that the CLT is apolitical. It’s an effort, he said, to avoid educational fads and expose students to rich intellectual material.

The company, however, describes the CLT as part of “the larger educational freedom movement of our time” — language that echoes that of conservative supporters of private-school vouchers and tax credits for home-schoolers. The “end goal,” the company says, is “promoting a classical curriculum.”

After a century of dominance by the College Board and the nonprofit ACT — which administers the test of the same name — the emergence of an alternative is “healthy and overdue,” said Frederick Hess, director of education policy at the American Enterprise Institute, a center-right think tank. “It’s all for the best if this becomes a more vibrant marketplace.”

There has been pushback. The College Board and ACT say that there is little research that shows that the CLT can accurately assess college readiness. Some classics scholars say that the CLT’s vision of classical education is too narrow; others say it’s too expansive.

While there is no single definition of classical education, the CLT celebrates canonical works from Western civilization, with an emphasis on Greek, Roman and early Christian thought. Memorization, logic and debate are considered important skills.

The test has three sections: verbal reasoning, grammar and writing, and quantitative reasoning (math). Its English sections, like the SAT and ACT, ask students to read dense passages, demonstrate their comprehension via multiple-choice questions and spot grammatical errors.

But in sample materials, there is more religious thought, with passages from Thomas Aquinas; Jonathan Edwards, the Great Awakening preacher; and Teresa of Ávila, a 16th-century saint.

 

"We need a more vibrant marketplace" in college admissions testing, bleats the AEI think tank toad, but Florida doesn't want a vibrant marketplace of ideas, it wants the CLT to be the only game in town for Florida universities period, and it wants to banish the textbooks and knowledge and ideas that might stand in opposition to what the CLT tests for.

And pretty soon in Florida it will be the only game in town.

Vote Like Your Country Depends On It, Con't

Last night I had much to say about Republicans refusing to redraw Voting Rights Act-compliant congressional districts that didn't disenfranchise Black voters in multiple states, and that SCOTUS had all but eliminated any enforcement power to remedy it.

Today, a three-judge federal panel unanimously found Alabama's GOP was violating the VRA and ordered a court-drawn map.

A panel of three federal judges on Tuesday rejected Alabama’s latest version of its congressional map, saying the state’s Republican-led legislature did not follow a court order to comply with the Voting Rights Act when it last redrew districts in July.

The judges have directed a special master and cartographer to create a remedial map.

“We do not take lightly federal intrusion into a process ordinarily reserved for the State Legislature. But we have now said twice that this Voting Rights Act case is not close,” the judges wrote in the order. “And we are deeply troubled that the State enacted a map that the State readily admits does not provide the remedy we said federal law requires.”

The order also says the judges were “disturbed by the evidence that the State delayed remedial proceedings but ultimately did not even nurture the ambition to provide the required remedy.”

The U.S. Supreme Court had issued a decision in June upholding the panel’s earlier ruling, which found that the Alabama legislature drew congressional districts that unlawfully diluted the political power of Black residents in violation of the federal Voting Rights Act. The three-judge panel had ordered the state to produce a new congressional map that included either an additional majority-Black district or a second district in which Black voters otherwise would have an opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice.

The redrawn map was approved by the Republican-controlled Alabama legislature in July. It had apportioned the state’s 7th Congressional District to include a population that is 50.65 percent Black and its 2nd Congressional District to have a population that’s 40 percent Black. The Alabama Senate voted 24-6 to pass the new plan, and the House approved the map 75-28.

Challengers argued that lowering the percentage of Black voters in the map’s sole majority-Black district and allocating a 40 percent Black voting population to another district did not meet the court’s requirement to produce a district that is “something quite close to” a Black majority.

In Tuesday’s order, the panel of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, Southern Division, took particular issue with the legislature’s failure to comply with a federal court order.

“We are not aware of any other case in which a state legislature — faced with a federal court order declaring that its electoral plan unlawfully dilutes minority votes and requiring a plan that provides an additional opportunity district — responded with a plan that the state concedes does not provide that district,” the judges wrote. “The law requires the creation of an additional district that affords Black Alabamians, like everyone else, a fair and reasonable opportunity to elect candidates of their choice. The 2023 Plan plainly fails to do so.”

 

But as I said last night, "What difference does it make?" 

We know this will be appealed to the 11th circuit and overturned, or if upheld, will go to SCOTUS, and that's if Alabama Republicans don't gum up the works with another map on an appeal.

The point is, the odds of this ruling actually being carried out are nil. I've been wrong before and I hope I'm wrong here. Alabama Republicans and Republicans in a number of other states deserve to be made examples of.

We'll see how far this goes, but I'm expecting the case to be dragged out for months until the courts rule that, as with Ohio, the unconstitutional districts have to remain lest the entire state be disenfranchised.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

Actual swastika flag-carrying Nazis sure love GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis's policies in Florida, especially the war against "woke" corporations like Disney, and they'll gladly tell you they're on his side as they openly march in public.

Members of white supremacist and antisemitic hate groups marched outside Orlando, Florida, on Saturday screaming invectives, raising the Nazi salute, and yelling “Heil Hitler” and “white power.”

“We are everywhere!” neo-Nazis can be heard shouting in a video shared by former Florida House of Representatives member Anna V. Eskamani. Later in the footage, they yelled, “Heil Hitler” while performing a Nazi salute.

Nazis in Altamonte Springs at Cranes Roost Park screaming “we are every where” — absolutely disgusting stuff and another example of the far right extremism growing in FL. pic.twitter.com/ixgKWcsJk6— Rep. Anna V. Eskamani 🔨 (@AnnaForFlorida) September 2, 2023

 

Days before the march, the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism warned it was coming. “Two extremist groups, the Goyim Defense League (GDL) and Blood Tribe (BT), are planning to gather in Florida in September 2023 for a joint, public demonstration(s) they are calling the ‘March of the Redshirts,'” the center said in a community advisory shared via email on Thursday.

The ADL describes the Goyim Defense League as “a loose network of individuals connected by their virulent antisemitism” with an “overarching goal” to “expel Jews from America.” The organization characterizes Blood Tribe, led by white supremacist Christopher Pohlhaus, as “a growing neo-Nazi group that claims to have chapters across the United States and Canada.”

“Blood Tribe presents itself as a hardcore white supremacist group and rejects white supremacists who call for softer ‘optics,'” the ADL writes.

In video captured by News2Share’s Ford Fischer, the groups chanted, “Jews will not replace us!” and “Jews get the rope.”

Pohlhaus appeared to lead portions of the march. When Pohlhaus yelled, “Heil the führer!” others responded with, “Heil Hitler!”

Speaking to reporters, Pohlhaus said, “We just have to start a fire. We’re the kindling. Once we set the fire, we get the fire hot, then we get the rest of our brothers blazing.”

“This is just the beginning,” Pohlhaus added later.

When another reporter asked a marcher what they were marching for, he responded, “White power.”

Some of the marchers individually expressed their distaste for Donald Trump, saying they prefer Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. When right-wing figure Laura Loomer appeared at the march, recording the Neo-Nazis with her cell phone, the crowd began to chant “faggot, faggot” in her direction. Loomer explained she was at the rally because she was getting her hair done nearby.

“We’re not voting Trump, Laura!” one marcher shouted at her. “We’re not voting for the right wing! It’s the kike wing.”

At this, another marcher shouted, “We’re all DeSantis supporters!”

Before the neo-Nazis gathered in Florida, News2Share reported on another smaller rally taking place outside California’s Disney World where approximately 10 people who identified as “Order of the Black Sun” destroyed a rainbow pride flag near the park’s entrance. One marcher carried a Ron DeSantis 2024 flag. Another held a sign that read, “Did you thank Hitler today?"

 

It should be the end of DeSantis's career. Sadly, it's only going to raise his poll numbers a bit among his fellow racist Republican domestic terrorists.

Ron's Gone Wrong, Con't

The battle over Florida's position on slavery as Black history was far worse than previously thought, as the state objected to AP Black History being taught in the state because the course refused to consider the benefits of slavery for Black Americans, and it was too hard on the slave traders, nearly all of them white.

When Florida rejected a new Advanced Placement course on African American Studies, state officials said they objected to the study of several concepts — like reparations, the Black Lives Matter movement and “queer theory.”

But the state did not say that in many instances, its reviewers also made objections in the state’s attempt to sanitize aspects of slavery and the plight of African Americans throughout history, according to a Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times review of internal state comments.

For example, a lesson in the Advanced Placement course focused on how Europeans benefited from trading enslaved people and the materials enslaved laborers produced. The state objected to the content, saying the instructional approach “may lead to a viewpoint of an ‘oppressor vs. oppressed’ based solely on race or ethnicity.”

In another lesson about the beginnings of slavery, the course delved into how tens of thousands of enslaved Africans had been “removed from the continent to work on Portuguese-colonized Atlantic islands and in Europe” and how those “plantations became a model for slave-based economy in the Americans.”

In response, the state raised concerns that the unit “may not address the internal slave trade/system within Africa” and that it “may only present one side of this issue and may not offer any opposing viewpoints or other perspectives on the subject.”

“There is no other perspective on slavery other than it was brutal,” said Mary Pattillo, a sociology professor and the department chair of Black Studies at Northwestern University. Pattillo is one of several scholars the Herald/Times interviewed during its review of the state’s comments about the AP African American Studies curriculum.

“It was exploitative, it dehumanized Black people, it expropriated their labor and wealth for generations to come. There is no other side to that in African American studies. If there’s another side, it may be in some other field. I don’t know what field that is because I would argue there is no other side to that in higher education,” Pattillo said.

Alexander Weheliye, African American studies professor at Brown University, said the evaluators’ comments on the units about slavery were a “complete distortion” and “whitewashing” of what happened historically.

“It’s really trying to go back to an earlier historical moment, where slavery was mainly depicted by white historians through a white perspective. So to say that the enslaved and the sister African nations and kingdoms and white colonizers and enslavers were the same really misrecognizes the fundamentals of the situation,” Weheliye said.

The objections are an example of how Florida education officials are enforcing broad state laws and rules that restrict how schools can teach about racism and other aspects of history — and how the College Board’s pilot African American Studies course became a casualty of those policies.

 

To recap, everything I said earlier this year about Republicans withing to eliminate Black history and replace it with a white-friendly version where the "exploitation of human beings may have been bad but" nonsense is active, systemic racist violence against the children of an entire state and especially against the descendants of those Black slaves.

 

They want that history gone, if not criminalizing its teaching. 

Republicans hate us. They want to exterminate our history, so they can exterminate us.

Don't expect us to forgive you if you facilitate this brutality.

Black history, Black lives, they all matter.

Last Call For Black Lives Matter

 They keep killing us, as they have been for 400 years, the American dream and all. Sometimes we live, and sometimes we die for no reason other than we are Black.

Three people were killed Saturday in a racially motivated attack after a gunman targeted Black people at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Florida, in one of several weekend shootings that again shocked Americans in public places – from stores to football games to parades.

“This shooting was racially motivated and he hated Black people,” Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters said at a news conference early Saturday evening.

Waters said the shooter, who he described as a White man in his 20s, shot and killed himself after the attack. The suspect left behind what the sheriff described as three manifestos outlining his “disgusting ideology of hate” and his motive in the attack.

All three victims, two men and one woman, were Black.

Waters said the shooter lived in Clay County, Florida, south of Jacksonville, with his parents. Jacksonville is located in northeast Florida, about 35 miles south of the Georgia border.

Waters said the shooter told his father by text to “check his computer.” The father found documents described by Waters as manifestos and called authorities.

But Waters said by the time authorities were alerted about the manifestos, the gunman had already started the attack in the Dollar General.

The shooting started shortly after 1 p.m. ET, blocks away from Edward Waters University, a historically Black school where students living on campus were told to stay in their residence halls. Waters said the gunman was seen on the school’s campus before heading to the Dollar General. No one was injured on the campus.

“He took that opportunity to put his bulletproof vest on outside and to put his mask on outside and then proceed to the store where he committed this horrible act,” Waters told CNN’s Jim Acosta.

Edward Waters University officials said the shooter was turned away from its campus after refusing to identify himself.

“The individual returned to their car and left campus without incident. The encounter was reported to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office by EWU security,” according to a university news release.

Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan said the gunman barricaded himself inside the store after the attack. It was not immediately clear if victims were shot inside or outside the store.

The sheriff said investigators believe the gunman acted alone and wore both a tactical vest and mask during the attack. He was armed with an AR-15 style rifle and a handgun.

To recap, a white supremacist armed with weapons and protecting himself with a tactical vest and mask went to a private Christian historically Black university with the intent of killing Black people. When the security staff turned him away, he went to a Dollar General in Jacksonville and killed three Black people and then himself.

Maybe he would have killed dozens or more. In America, being Black means that sometimes, we take comfort in the fact that fewer of us are killed by fate, mourning three instead of three dozen.

Sixty years ago this weekend Dr. Martin Luther King gave his famous Dream speech on Washington DC. Several states will barely teach current students about that fact, and they definitely won't cover King's other speeches where he dismantled the notion that his dream was possible without real work from white moderates, and that they needed to get started on that. Sixty years later, not much has changed.

But Black Lives Still Matter. 

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

DC Federal Judge Tanya Chutkan is already getting death threats serious enough to prompt an arrest for being the presiding judge over his January 6th trial, months before the proceeding have even started.

A Texas woman was arrested and has been charged with threatening to kill the federal judge overseeing the criminal case against former President Donald Trump in Washington and a member of Congress.

Abigail Jo Shry of Alvin, Texas, called the federal courthouse in Washington and left the threatening message — using a racist term for U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan — on Aug. 5, court records show. Investigators traced her phone number and she later admitted to making the threatening call, according to a criminal complaint.

In the call, Shry told the judge, who is overseeing the election conspiracy case against Trump, “You are in our sights, we want to kill you,” the documents said. Prosecutors allege Shry also said, “If Trump doesn’t get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you,” and she threatened to kill U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Democrat running for mayor of Houston, according to court documents.

A judge earlier this week ordered Shry jailed. Court records show Shry is represented by the Houston public defender’s office, which did not immediately return a message seeking comment on Wednesday.

Trump has publicly assailed Chutkan, a former assistant public defender who was nominated to the bench by President Barack Obama, calling her “highly partisan” and “ VERY BIASED & UNFAIR!” because of her past comments in a separate case overseeing the sentencing of one of the defendants charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Chutkan in a hearing Friday imposed a protective order in the case limiting what evidence handed over by prosecutors the former president and his legal team can publicly disclose. She warned Trump’s lawyers that his defense should be mounted in the courtroom and “not on the internet.”

 

How dare a Black woman preside over a federal criminal case against Donald Trump, right? Of course she's getting death threats, along with repeated Trump target Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, also Black. Hell, Fulton County, Georgia DA Fani Willis has been getting death threats for years now. 

 

What they really hate is Black people - particularly Black women -- daring to have power over America's favorite white supremacist.  Don't think for a second that race isn't playing a heavy part in these threats against the prosecutors and judges involved in Donald Trump's dozens of indictments.

And don't think for a second that Trump will hesitate to turn up the heat until someone is hurt or killed.

Black History Matters

Black History Matters, because Black History is American history, but in Ron DeSantis's Florida, it's propaganda and indoctrination designed to take history away from everyone.

 

Slavery was a compromise. The Black Lives Matter movement led to more crime. Masculinity helped win World War II.

Those are some of the lessons included in PragerU Kids videos, an educational entertainment program created by PragerU, a right-wing advocacy group long criticized for its content being “misleading” or factually inaccurate. Its videos have prompted even more backlash online since PragerU CEO Marissa Streit announced last month that the group is partnering with the state of Florida as an education vendor to provide supplemental lessons.

Among the PragerU Kids videos making the rounds on social media is one called “Leo & Layla Meet Frederick Douglass,” in which a pair of children go back in time and meet an animated depiction of Frederick Douglass. In the video, Douglass, an abolitionist who devoted his life to anti-slavery efforts, describes slavery as a compromise between the Founding Fathers and the Southern colonies for the benefit of the U.S. The depiction also criticizes fellow abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison.

The animated video drew swift criticism from social media users who deemed it propaganda, and condemned an apparent reference to the police violence protests of 2020, in which a purported Douglass said “William refuses all compromise, demands immediate change, and if he doesn’t get what he wants, he likes to set things on fire,” referring to Garrison.

“This is some of the most dangerous & false propaganda I’ve ever seen,” one person tweeted. “The description of Frederick Douglass in this animation is a flat out lie and the concept that children should be learning from this should scare everyone.”

Another added: “This video bastardizes the essence of Frederick Douglass. It’s insulting for me as a former history/govt teacher. I can’t imagine how devastating it must feel for Black people to see this dehumanizing curriculum implemented (or continued) in Florida public schools.”

Streit, though, said in a phone interview Thursday, that any educational offering could potentially include material that could be deemed offensive.

“I challenge those same people to look through every word that Scholastic has printed or, or every word that BrainPOP has published, and tell me that you’re not going to find something that you are not offended by," she said. "But you know, I completely stand by what’s in our videos. I actually think that our Frederick Douglass video is a great one.”

Streit contends that critics have only read one version of history — a progressive one, documented in works like "A People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn. "The fact that people are so upset is actually a sign of the fact that there has been one way of doing things for a very long time," she added.

Her sentiments echo her announcement last month that the K-12 “supplemental educational resources” are a response to U.S. schools being “hijacked by the left.” The news comes as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is running for president in 2024, has championed controversial changes to the state’s education curriculum. His administration has tried to block a high school Advanced Placement African American studies course and signed laws to restrict the instruction of reproductive health and gender identity in schools. Additionally, challenges to book access have reportedly increased as a result of DeSantis’ education bills.

In a statement, the Florida Department of Education said in part: “The Florida Department of Education reviewed PragerU Kids and determined the material aligns to Florida’s revised civics and government standards. PragerU Kids is no different than many other resources, which can be used as supplemental materials in Florida schools at district discretion.”

 

PragerU hogwash as an officially recognized supplemental lesson for kids in Florida is disturbing as hell. It's vile, and they give the excuse that the right-wing noise machine always gives: "Stupid libtards fear our real history in the marketplace of ideas!"

Well yes, "slavery was an acceptable compromise that helped the Blacks" is something that should be shunned along with flat earth nonsense and "your womb belongs to God and the state".

And I wish  Zinn's People's History of the US was as ubiquitous in high school or college as the right claims it is, Jesus.

Black History Matters.

Ron's Gone Wrong, Con't

Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis's authoritarian tyranny continues as he has summarily removed a second Black state attorney for failing to give in to his diktats.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has once again suspended an elected local prosecutor, a move that comes as his presidential campaign struggles amid a continued reset.

DeSantis on Tuesday suspended Orlando-area State Attorney Monique Worrell, a Democrat who is the only Black woman serving as a local prosecutor in Florida.

It’s the second time he has used his authority as governor to take such action. DeSantis suspended Tampa-area prosecutor Andrew Warren in August 2022 for signaling he would not bring charges under Florida's new 15-week abortion ban. A federal judge called that decision unconstitutional but said he could not overturn the suspension. A challenge filed by Warren was later thrown out by the DeSantis-friendly Florida Supreme Court.

Both Warren's and Worrell’s 2020 campaigns received help from a committee that got money from Democratic megadonor George Soros, a frequent target of Republican attacks. In fundraising emails and in speeches, DeSantis has boasted that he is the “only elected official in America to remove a ‘progressive’ Soros-funded district attorney,” a reference to Warren's suspension.

DeSantis made the announcement during a hastily called press conference in Tallahassee. It included top law enforcement officials and a room packed with his administration staffers, who were apparently given a heads-up the day before to show up at the 8:15 a.m. press conference. DeSantis alerted the media to the event less than 30 minutes before it began.

The press conference was held one day after DeSantis' presidential campaign elevated his gubernatorial chief of staff, James Uthmeier, to campaign manager. Uthmeier was chief of staff when DeSantis suspended Warren in 2022.

DeSantis is trailing in public polling to former President Donald Trump, and over the past few weeks, he has fired roughly 40% of his staff as part of an ongoing reboot of his presidential campaign.

Worrell’s held a press conference in Orlando hours after the DeSantis announcement, calling him a "weak dictator."

"I am your duly elected state attorney, and nothing done by a weak dictator can change that," she said.

In an interview with NBC News, Worrell said that the country was "in danger of losing our democracy."

"This man is running for president and the country should be afraid," she said. "The country should be afraid of an individual who removes duly elected officials because they are not politically aligned with him. The country should be afraid of a man who dares to teach our children that slavery was somehow a benefit to the African Americans in this country. ... Our country should be afraid of the impact that this could have across this country if he were to be elected."

Worrell’s suspension comes after months of political fights with Republicans, including with DeSantis directly, over her handling of a string of Orlando-areas shootings — most notably a March shooting spree in the Orlando area that left three dead, including a 9-year-old and a local television journalist. The alleged gunman had eight felonies and 11 misdemeanors, but those all came while he was a juvenile. His only crime as a legal adult in 2021 was when he was in possession of drug paraphernalia and cannabis. 

Worrell, whose office announced it is seeking the death penalty in the case, said Republicans were playing politics with the issue, and noted her office closed almost 3,000 cases this year. But conservatives blasted her for allowing someone with such an extensive criminal record, even though most of it came while he was a juvenile, to remain on the streets.

 

DeSantis is systematically removing Black prosecutors from office, point blank. The state Supreme Court will continue to side with him. And even as his presidential aspirations rightfully fail, the people of Florida will continue to be ruled over by a petty tinpot dictator until they decide they've had enough, and even then it may already be too late.

That's The Sound Of The Police, Con't

The sound of these six white former Mississippi sheriff's deputies who tortured two Black men and shot one in the mouth is a guilty plea deal on federal civil rights charges.

 

Six former Mississippi law enforcement officers have pleaded guilty to charges related to the torture of two Black men, US Attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi Darren LaMarca said in a Thursday news conference.

The announcement comes after federal charges were filed against the former law enforcement officers, who “called themselves ‘The Goon Squad’ because of their willingness to use excessive force and not to report it,” according to a federal charging document.

“The people of Mississippi and those of Rankin County expect those who enforce the laws to follow the law, clearly these men did not – they held themselves above the law,” LaMarca said.

The charges include conspiracy against rights, deprivation of rights under color of law, conspiracy to obstruct justice and obstruction of justice, according to online federal court records.

Former Rankin County Sheriff’s Department deputy Hunter Elward faces the most serious of charges – discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence. Court documents name the other officers charged as Brett McAlpin, Jeffrey Middleton, Christian Dedmon, Daniel Opdyke and Joshua Hartfield.

The incident occurred on January 24 in Braxton, Mississippi, just southeast of Jackson. It came to light after two men, Michael Jenkins and Eddie Parker, filed a federal civil lawsuit. Many of the claims in the lawsuit were reflected in the federal charging document.

The two men, who are Black, say six White law enforcement officers entered the home they were in and tortured them for nearly two hours, culminating with Jenkins being shot in the mouth.

“The defendants in this case tortured and inflicted unspeakable harm on their victims, egregiously violated the civil rights of citizens who they were supposed to protect, and shamefully betrayed the oath they swore as law enforcement officers,” US Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a statement.

FBI Special Agent in Charge Jermicha Fomby described the alleged actions as “horrific.” He added, “I did not expect this to be the actions that we would have subjected upon our citizens in the year 2023.”

“On behalf of our clients Michael Jenkins and Eddie Parker, Black Lawyers for Justice thanks the United States Department of Justice for the historic legal results choices achieved today,” Malik Shabazz, the lead attorney for the victims, said in a statement.

In an interview last month, Parker told CNN: “Justice is what it all boils down to. I’m just like them, you know, whether they in uniform or not.”

 

These assholes are still facing state charges to boot and a plea deal on those charges is expected later this month, and I guarantee you that nothing would have happened to these bastard cops if Trump's "Justice Department" had been the ones in charge still. Merrick Garland got this done in seven months.

 

And yes, in 2023 we're still having to turn to Reconstruction-era anti-Klan laws to prosecute white supremacist bastard cops. Not a hell of a lot has changed for us Black folk, either.

 

Black Lives Still Matter.

 

Last Call For Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

Both Black Tennessee state lawmakers expelled from the state legislature earlier this year by angry, overwhelmingly white Republicans have easily won their special elections to be returned to Nashville, in time for a scheduled special session by GOP Gov. Bill Lee on gun safety measures.

The two Democratic state representatives in Tennessee who were expelled by Republicans in April for protesting in support of gun safety on the chamber floor won elections Thursday night for their old seats, The Associated Press projected.

Justin Jones won his election for his state House seat in Nashville, and Justin J. Pearson won his race in Memphis, according to AP projections.

Jones defeated Republican Laura Nelson, while Pearson won his race against independent candidate Jeff Johnston.

Both lawmakers had been reinstated by local government officials shortly after their expulsion in April, but they still had to run for their old seats — both in primary elections in June and in Thursday’s general elections.

While Jones and Pearson were heavily favored to win — each of their districts comprise heavily Democratic areas — their electoral success nevertheless delivered a resounding message to Republicans in the state Legislature that the lawmakers continue to enjoy robust support.

Their return may also provide momentum for Democrats and other lawmakers who support gun measures, ahead of a special legislative session scheduled later this month that Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, called specifically to address gun reform.

Jones, in a tweet shortly after the AP projected his victory, addressed Republican House Speaker Cameron Sexton, who led the expulsion hearings, and signaled that he would continue pushing for gun legislation during the special session.

"Well, Mr. Speaker, the People have spoken. The FIND OUT era of politics is just beginning. See you August 21st for special session," Jones tweeted.

Pearson, too, signaled he would work to organize further protests supporting gun reform, as well as efforts to advance the issue, during the upcoming special session.

“This is only the beginning for this Movement. We will organize, mobilize and activate to work tirelessly for the day when there are no more calls to respond to mass shootings and gun violence," he said in a statement. "I look forward to heading back to the Tennessee state capitol Aug. 21 for the special session on gun legislation. We, the People, will march, rally and work to pass legislation."

The question is do Sexton and the TN GOP have the balls to try this again, proving to America and the world just how racist they are? It's been a PR disaster for them for months and these Black lawmakers are showing everyone that even in deep red Tennessee that there's a future for Democrats and the people who voted for them.

We'll see. They tried to martyr them once.

But Black Lives Still Matter.